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As Christians, we need to have the right perspective. Wrong perspectives can often make us choose a course of action that is not in our best interest. In the 1940’s, a woman by the name of Ruth Gruber was working with the Department of the Interior, helping to promote the Alaskan territory to homesteaders. Many times she traveled by dog sled, and at other times, she was blessed to travel by truck or plan.

In 1942, she was about to board a small plane to Nome, when she was handed an urgent telegraph from the Secretary of the Interior. This was before the days of email and text messaging, so she had to wait for the telegraph operator to decode it for her.

The pilot became impatient and took of without her. She later said that she needed that plane so much that she almost walked away from that emergency telegraph. She said the thought of missing that plane to Nome was at first, an unbearable pressure she could not deal with. That is the perspective she had at the time the pilot took off.

Her perspective changed about ten minutes later when the plane circled back over the runway, then veered off into the ice and crashed, killing all aboard. The point is this: If ten minutes can change our perspective so drastically, what does eternity do to it?

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